


Of The Stars

by esteoflorien



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-06
Updated: 2014-08-06
Packaged: 2018-02-11 23:45:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2087547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/esteoflorien/pseuds/esteoflorien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janeway has much to remember when she finds herself lost in the stars.<br/>(First published on Tumblr in 2013.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of The Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PerilouslyClose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerilouslyClose/gifts).



> A Janeway character study - hints at an OC of sorts, her grandfather.

She is a child of the heartland. When she was a little girl, she dreamt of the stars. They shone brightly in that clear Indiana sky, tiny gold pinpricks against heavy, midnight-blue velvet. She remembers running out to the fields, falling backwards against the green soybeans. She remembers her grandfather’s voice, low and accented, telling her their names. They look different now than they did then, when the stars called her name before Starfleet did.

When she was young, she wanted to live amongst the stars to see the constellations up close. She didn’t realize that the constellations appear as they do on Earth, and on Earth only, and that when one lives amongst the stars, the constellations disappear. She has learned new things since, of course. She knows the truth of what beings exist on the planets between those stars and yet, as wondrous and as harrowing as they might be, she prefers the fictions of her youth, when she looked to the sky and saw the Big Dipper and sang, her little-girl’s soprano blending with her grandfather’s baritone,  _follow the drinking gourd_. Earth’s history lives in those stars, she learned; the stars are keepers of stories that should never be forgotten.

(Once, on her first mission as captain, she slept before the great glass windows –  _windows_ , she persists in calling them, to the amusement of the crew;  _windows_ , she says,  _a far nicer word than ‘viewscreen’_ – on the bridge, wedged as best as she could manage between the chairs. And that was when she realized that the stars of her childhood were gone, when she looked at them and saw things to study and visit and catalogue, and not things to dream of.)

Tonight, she finds herself thinking of Indiana for the first time in a long while. How long has it been since she spent a summer in the fields, measuring the corn against her knees? If she is honest with herself, she aches for them, for the breath of the breeze and the warmth of the sun; she stamps down her memories so as to avoid the pain of remembering. She misses the sunset, the harbinger of the stars, most of all.

And now, here they are, lost amidst the blackness, so very far from the Sun.  _Somewhere along this journey we’ll find a way home_ , she told them, with a confidence she could muster for the moment, but not quite sustain.

She cannot sleep. She stares through the glass.  _Follow the drinking gourd_ , she recalls, closing her eyes, letting the memory of her grandfather’s voice wash over her. There is no North Star, no light to guide them home. And yet:  _set a course for home_ , she said, decisively, gazing through the window at the uncharted dark ahead of her, looking ahead because that is what leaders do: they look to the future when everything around them seems lost. 


End file.
